As with my 101+ Dehydrating & 101+Canning posts, here is a new 101+ Gardening Tips & Ideas package to help you get ready for gardening season!
Click on any title below to be taken to awesome information from around the web!
101+ Gardening Tips & Ideas
General Tips
Saving Big on Lumber Supplies for Raised Garden Beds
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Growing Your Own Food but Were Afraid to Ask
Our Experiences With Companion Planting
Simple Record Keeping for the Garden with Printable Seed Starting Chart
Top 10 Seed Catalogs for the PREPared Gardener
6 Tips for Success if You’re Planting Your Garden Late
7 Things to do right now to get ready for a fabulous summer garden
How Much Food Can a Small Homestead Produce?
Monthly Calendar for Garden Maintenance
What You Need to know Before You Start your First Vegetable Garden
How Much Should I Plant To Feed My Family For A Year?
Benefits of Keeping a Gardening Journal
Square Foot Gardening Mistakes – learn from ours first!
The New Square Foot Garden – save time and money when you’re growing in small spaces or use to help organize your way through the garden and rotate crops for regular folk!
Planning & Methods
How to Build and Plant a Square Foot Garden
9 DIY Raised Bed Garden Designs
Spring Garden Primer – Do a Mason Jar Soil Test
Planning Your Spring Garden
Vegetable Families and Crop Rotation
How to Plant an Herbal Tea Garden
Put Your Garden Beds to Rest for Winter
How to Save Big on Lumber Supplies for Your Square Foot Garden
How to Grow a Vegetable Garden in the Shade
Seeds
Building a Seed Growing Rack on the Cheap
Top 10 Seed (Organic, Non-GMO) Seed Catalogs
How viable are your stored seeds?
How to Save and Store Your Heirloom Garden Seed
Sprouting new garden plants from seeds: tips from an old pro
Survival Seeds in a Can-9 Years Later
How to Read the Back of Your Vegetable Seed Packets
Staring Seeds with a Soil Blocker
Transplanting
Planting and Transplanting Seedlings
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Compost
The Dirty Truth About Composting
Smart Composting – Turn your Spoils into Soil
DIY Manure Tea – Putting Manure to Work in Your Garden
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Plants
Crops That Can Be Planted Mid-Summer
How to Grow
Be aware that crop specific tutorials may be effected by where you live, the drought conditions, and heartiness. Use these only as a general guide on how to plant raise and harvest, but check into your local growing zones and soil conditions for properly growing them in your area. There are also hundreds of varieties of vegetables and fruits to grow. I am including a basic selection for beginning gardeners.
Carrots (for those of you in hard or clay soils, or not a ton of gardening space, growing carrots in containers is a great option)
Not only is organic gardening better for your health, it’s how man gardened for centuries until the advent of petro-chemical fertilizers and pest repellants. Get back to The Natural Way!
Pests & Weeds & Beneficials
Release the Ladybugs! A Natural Way to Control Aphids
Deer, Gracious Me! Nature’s Guide to Keeping Deer Out of Your Garden
How to Use Vinegar for Weed Control
Summer’s Most Infamous Pests… And How to Combat Them Naturally
Practically Free Garden Weed Barrier
DIY Natural Garden Pest Control
How to Keep Animals Out of Your Garden
Protect Your Garden with Beneficial Insects
Biodiversity
10 Things to Spray, Sprinkle & Brew for Garden Pest Control
10 Interesting Facts About Earthworms
How to Make Garlic Pepper Tea for Pest Control
Garrett Juice (for fertilizer and pest control)
Water
How to Build a Rain Barrel, Plus Care and Maintenance
How to Preserve Your Garden Bounty
Katy Willis is a writer, lifelong homesteader, and master herbalist, master gardener, and canine nutritionist. Katy is a preparedness expert and modern homesteader practicing everyday preparedness, sustainability, and a holistic lifestyle.
She knows how important it is to be prepared for whatever life throws at you, because you just never know what's coming. And preparedness helps you give your family the best chance to thrive in any situation.
Katy is passionate about living naturally, growing food, keeping livestock, foraging, and making and using herbal remedies. Katy is an experienced herbalist and a member of the CMA (Complementary Medical Association).
Her preparedness skills go beyond just being "ready", she's ready to survive the initial disaster, and thrive afterward, too. She grows 100% organic food on roughly 15 acres and raises goats, chickens, and ducks. She also lovingly tends her orchard, where she grows many different fruit trees. And, because she likes to know exactly what she's feeding her family, she's a seasoned from-scratch cook and gluten-free baker.
Katy teaches foraging and environmental education classes, too, including self-sufficient living, modern homesteading, seed saving, and organic vegetable gardening.
Katy helps others learn forgotten skills, including basic survival skills and self-reliance.
She's been published on sites such as MSN, Angi, Home Advisor, Family Handyman, Wealth of Geeks, Readers Digest, and more.